Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Be opaqueHave no memory
Make no attempt to be understoodStop suffering foolsBe kind to animals no matter whatListen to the angelTry to look upon death as a friendAccept pain as the conditionBe more patientDon't turn on the lightaetat 72

Light has come into the sky here now, also -- you will recall the landscape -- and with it a fleet of heavy-industrial asphalt paving trucks, dueling with the several garbage trucks for noise-rights to the infernal stretch of roadway between the Bay and the Circle... where the three potbellied stone grizzly cubs on the Fountain, elderly by now, continually yawn and dribble, as if to say, We've heard all this before.

But of course, fortunate stone hulks that they are, they can truly succeed at the feat of Having no memory even without requiring resolve to manage it. And what mayhem they look upon impassively -- 30,000 vehicles a day, by one count taken in the relatively tranquil epoch of the turn of this century. Fifty-five years ago a motorist plowed through the Fountain, and the stone grizzly-cub gargoyles had to be replaced. But do the replacements know the difference? If they cry out to the angel, as she toils on foot up the hill toward Indian Rock, will she hear them, over the engine roar?

To the point & to the quick, as much address to those who do as those who don't, the way any self-respecting resolution should be. What need to turn on the light, indeed, when it inevitably creeps in through the cracks, like memory, like desire. Makes me think of an unspoken beatitude: Suffer not suffering, for we will suffer it plenty.

Thanks very much, Duncan and Terry. The Bellini gets better and better for me every night. As to the nocturnal resolutions however...after a few days of testing and nights of abandoning them, I have found them to comprise a very slippery slope, one might even say chute, dipping inevitably and rapidly down and back toward if not irrevocably into a former state (slough) of irresolution.